1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains generally to processing of text documents, and in particular to methods of evaluating documents using criteria that is specific to the type of document being evaluated.
2. Description of the Related Art
The task of creating a resume that follows the conventions expected in the industry, while being technically correct, and including appropriate action words, and the like, is a time consuming and error prone process. Typically, the job seeker is not savvy as to the metrics used by the prospective employer in evaluating the formal aspects and general content of the resume. It will be appreciated that due to the large volume of resumes received, a number of companies will sort these resumes according to a number of subjective criteria, which are often not strictly related to the position being filled. The sorting of the resumes in this manner speeds the process of finding candidates that appear most suitable and serious about the position, and reduces the overhead inherent in the hiring process. Often resumes are first filtered by the human resources department, or other personnel, wherein only resumes ranking highly in the sorting process are viewed in more detail by human resources personnel or by the manager seeking to fill a particular position for which the resume has been sent. Job seekers would benefit from having their resumes checked and improved prior to submission.
Spelling and Grammar Checks
A number of tools exist for checking written documents, but these are generally provided to check generic document characteristics such as spelling and grammar, and allow for correction.
Spelling and grammar checking routines are incorporated in many word-processing programs to aid the user in generating a grammatically correct document. These tools are designed to check documents written in a specific language, but usually make no consideration for the specific type of document. Hence, they would apply the same set of rules to resumes, to cover letters, and to chocolate cake recipes. When applying spell-check or grammar-check to a resume, one would expect the detection of language errors, but will not expect to detect violations of even the most basic rules of effective resume and cover-letter writing.
Document-Specific Checks—Microsoft Power Point
One software tool that offers checks beyond grammar and spelling is Power Point, published by Microsoft from Redmond, Wash. The program takes advantage of the specific nature of the document—slide presentations—and applies several document-specific checks. One of the automatic checks verifies that slide titles use a user-selectable case (UPPER case, lower case, or Sentence case). Another check verifies that the body text of the presentation uses a user-selectable case (UPPER case, lower case, or Sentence case). Another check verifies that end-punctuation of paragraphs uses a user-selectable character such as a period. Another check requires that the total number of fonts used in the presentation does not exceed a user-specified number, such as 3. Another check verifies that text size of the slide title is larger or equal to a user-specified number of points such as 36. Another check verifies that the text size of the body text is larger or equal to a user-specified number of points such as 20. Another check verifies that the number of bullet points per slide does not exceed a user-specified number such as 6. Another check verifies that the number of lines per bullet point does not exceed a user-specified number such as 2.
Document Specific Checks—Performance Appraisal Writers
A program called Avantos Review Writer, published by Avantos Performance Systems of Emeryville, Calif. in 1994, was designed to assist managers in writing performance appraisals for their employees. The program provides various tools for writing the performance appraisal as well as checking it for conformance to a set of rules. These checks include “Legal Check,” “Originality Check,” and “Completeness Check.” The “Legal Check” will flag, for example, the word “baby” as a potential reference to either age or behavior, which may not be appropriate in a performance appraisal document. The “Originality Check” will flag any case where the example text provided by the program was left unchanged in the final performance appraisal document. The “Completeness Check” looks for fields that were left blank and should have been filled to create a valid performance appraisal. Another performance appraisal tool, Performance Now, published by Knowledge Point of Petaluma, Calif. in 1994, also offered tools for writing performance appraisals and checking them for language that may reflect employment discrimination.
Resume Creation Tools
Several tools exist which are directed at the creation of winning resumes and cover letters, such as WinWay® Resume Deluxe, published by WinWay Corporation of Folsom Calif. Resume creation is a constantly evolving field, which seeks to maximize the efficiency with which resumes are created and the effectiveness of the completed resumes.
Specific Checks
One important area in resume creation involves the checking of the job history section, for example, verification of employment dates. One resume-writing program, “PFS:Resume and Job Search Pro” by The Learning Company of Cambridge, Mass., includes a “Verify Dates” feature. Provided that the user has entered their employment dates into the required fields, the “Verify Dates” feature checks “employment dates” conformance against a set of rules. For example, the “employment dates” field must conform to a standard date format such as “March 2000 to June 2001”, “March 2000”, “1990 to present.” The program checks for format consistency of dates. Many dates formats are allowed, such as “1998”, “march 1998” and “Jan. 31, 1998.” The program checks that all dates within the same resume section use the same format. A string such as “very long ago” in the “employment date” field would be flagged as an error, with an acceptable year range including 1900-2100. A year such as “1790” could be considered as an error. The program also requires all dates to conform to the “reverse chronological order” rule, that is, the most recent job should be listed first. Any significant time gaps between jobs listed in the chronological section of the resume are flagged as errors. Date-range overlaps are flagged as a violation of the “reverse chronological order” rule. Upon detection of possible errors, this program reports the error to the user and may suggest a correction. While date checking is indeed a useful feature, this particular resume-writing program falls short in recognizing and reporting specific date cases. For example, if a resume contains two jobs with overlapping time periods, the program will report this as a violation of the “reverse chronological order” rule instead of pointing out that there is a date overlap, which could be a benign situation. Also, the program does not check the time-sequence ordering of schools listed in the education section. Further, and most importantly, this program falls short of protecting the user from many other potential pitfalls specific to the field of resume and letter writing, and cannot check resumes files unless those files contain the employment dates in certain designated fields.
Limitations of Existing Art
Application completeness is often a problem area in resume and letter creation and applicants may leave out important fields such as their full name, street address, phone number, alternate/cell-phone number, or e-mail address. When describing their work experience, applicants may forget to include employment dates, employment location, or job title. Applicants may describe a job just by job title and employment dates, without adding some helpful information about their specific tasks and accomplishments. When describing their education, applicants may neglect to include important information such as name of the school, degree obtained, or graduation date. Applicants may even omit whole sections of the resume such as Experience or Education. Such omissions could result in their resume being discarded.
Additionally, even if a required data item is entered, problems can arise with the applicant entering the wrong information, or inappropriate information within a given field. For example, an applicant who is using a template for writing their resume may leave template fields such as “<put your job title here>” or “<put number of experience years here>” intact. Also, an applicant could enter information about their age, religion, gender, sexual preference, where any of these items would be very troubling to a human resource professional who is trying to avoid potential discrimination complaints. When entering a web page address, applicant may accidentally enter an incorrect web address—one that leads nowhere, or even worse—one that leads to a page containing information that may reduce, rather than enhance their employment prospects. Likewise, applicants may enter an email address that is incorrect, thus making it very likely that any employer response will go unnoticed. Applicants may also make the common mistake of providing a phone number, street address or email address of a current employer; something their current or prospective employer may consider inappropriate. Even if the phone number is personal, the applicant may provide a phone number that is not monitored at all hours of the day, and neglect to make sure there is an answering machine connected to that number.
When describing their work experience, applicants may overlook problems with the dates associated with each job. Common problems include date overlap between two jobs, date gaps, where it appears that the applicant was unemployed for any period of time, or wrong ordering of the jobs, where the jobs are not ordered in reverse-chronological-order as is customary in resumes. Such date errors may cause a potential employer to discard an otherwise-acceptable resume and thus will reduce the chances of employment.
Furthermore, applicants may incorrectly or less effectively order the elements within the resume, or cover letter, and reduce their chances of being considered for a position. For example, an applicant who has just completed his/her PhD degree and whose entire employment history consists of temporary jobs at fast-food restaurants may inappropriately list these temporary jobs before describing the recently acquired and highly sought-after PhD degree. Less common but still possible errors include positioning of the Objective section anywhere but at the top of the resume, or positioning the References section anywhere but at the end of the resume.
When describing their Education, applicants may include information that is detrimental to their employment prospects, such as a GPA (Grade Point Average) that is lower than 3.0. Such GPA would better be left out of the resume. Also, applicants may overlook the opportunity to add value to their resume by describing various jobs they held in order to finance their tuition, or extra-curricular activities that add value to their degree or contribute to the community.
Within the References section, applicants may include names of references without properly preparing those references or even telling them that they are mentioned. Such practice may cause a person named as reference to provide inappropriate or even damaging information.
Applicants may also make formatting errors in their resume. For example, they may use page margins that are too small, too large, or unbalanced. They may also create a multi-page resume where the last page is almost empty, leaving the reader feeling that something is missing or the resume is out of balance. Applicants may create resumes that contain too many pages, where a shorter, more focused resume may produce better impression. Applicants may use fonts that are too large or too small for comfortable reading, or text colors that are too light to be reproduced well or difficult to scan by a computer scanner. They may use too many types of typefaces or too many text colors, distracting the reader from actual resume content. They may insert unusual characters such as “˜” or “\” by mistake, when they in fact intended to insert a valid character or a bullet. They may capitalize large sections of the resume to emphasize them, not realizing that readability is greatly impaired by this practice. The may use a non-standard typeface that only exists on their own system, but is not present on other systems. Hence certain characters that appear readable on the original system (e.g. a special type of bullet) may look completely different on another system. One particular case that comes to mind involves a resume that originally included a bullet character next to each phrase. However when our company received the resume via e-mail, it appeared to contain a question mark next to each accomplishment. Obviously this did not reflect well on the applicant.
A number of formatting, structure, and syntax faux pas can still occur on resumes that likewise limit the effectiveness of the resume and may thereby constrain probability of being seriously considered for a position. One area that is often missed is relating to the consistency conventions, whereas for example a particular structure may be correct when considered individually, but is inconsistent with other aspects of the resume, or cover letter (for example, inconsistency in capitalization, indentation, font size, color, end-punctuation of bullet items, etc.)
Applicants may use various stock phrases such as “Duties included” or “Responsible for” in their resume where a more proactive description of their roles would be much more attractive to a prospective employer. Applicants may also use words such as “I” or “me” in a resume where such wording is usually inappropriate. Other items that are best left out of the resume or cover letter include any discussion of salary, reason for leaving, physical attributes such as height, weight, date of birth, social security number, age, gender, marital status, spouse or children, religion, ethnic background and political affiliation.
Applicants may include photographs in their resume, something that is not recommended for any but few specific occupations such as modeling.
Most of the above issues apply equally to cover letters as well as to resumes. When creating a cover letter, applicants may forget to include a complete address for the employer they are targeting, or forget to include “Enclosure” line at the end indicating that a resume is enclosed.
When creating a resume, cover-letter, or similar employment-related document, the applicant wants to create the highest quality, most effective document based on their given qualifications. Unfortunately, to enhance effectiveness they are often left creating a number of tries and then visually attempting to determine how effective it might be.
It will be appreciated that resume programs address a need that goes beyond conventional word processing software, however, that current resume programs have significant limitations that may reduce the effectiveness of the final result.
Therefore, a need exists for an automated process to check resumes and cover letters for common errors that are not caught by generic spell-check and grammar-check processes. Such a tool will help users create enhanced resumes and cover-letters. The present invention satisfies those needs, as well as others, and overcomes the deficiencies of previously developed document processing systems and applications.